Part 4 of 4 With Vincent Stanley, Patagonia’s ‘Chief Storyteller’

Vincent Stanley, co-author with Yvon Chouinard of The Responsible Company, has been with Patagonia on and off since its beginning in 1973, for many of those years in key executive roles as head of sales or marketing.

More informally, Stanley is Patagonia’s longtime chief storyteller. He helped develop the Footprint Chronicles, the company’s interactive website that outlines the social and environmental impact of its products; the Common Threads Initiative; and Patagonia Books. He serves as Patagonia’s director of philosophy and is a visiting fellow at the Yale School of Management. Stanley is also a poet whose work has appeared in the Best American Poetry series. He and his wife, the writer Nora Gallagher, live in Santa Barbara.

Vincent Stanley

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Here are some highlights from the last in a four-part series of LIFT Economy podcast episodes with Stanley:

  • How Patagonia thinks about social, environmental and financial goal-setting and key performance indicators.
  • The thought process Patagonia follows to set prices for its products.
  • Why Patagonia uses internal and external reporting practices, including the B Impact Assessment and the Footprint Chronicles.
  • How Patagonia bakes its values and benefit purposes into its company bylaws.

LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm with a mission to create, model and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life.

B the Change gathers and shares the voices from within the movement of people using business as a force for good and the community of Certified B Corporations. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the nonprofit B Lab.


Patagonia Mini-MBA: The Social and Environmental Aspects of Operations was originally published in B the Change on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.


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